How to Report a Gambling Scam

Where to report a gambling scam: hotlines and portals by country

If you have been scammed by a gambling site, the single most useful thing you can do is report it quickly, to the right channel. What that channel is depends on where you are. Some jurisdictions have a dedicated scam or cybercrime line; others route you through the police or through a gambling help line that can point you to the right desk.

The table below gathers the numbers and portals that are confirmed and current. One honest note before you read it: in several jurisdictions the best-known gambling phone line is a counseling helpline rather than a fraud-reporting line. Counselors on those lines deal with gambling problems every day, and they know where a scam report should go, so they remain a good first call if you are unsure. For the steps to take before you report, see what to do after a gambling scam.

For the other jurisdictions covered on this site, China, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, there is no single confirmed gambling-scam hotline in the sources behind this page. The general rule is the same everywhere: go to the police, and go quickly. You can check the country guides, such as gambling in Vietnam or gambling in Malaysia, for the gambling landscape in each place, and use government scam check tools to verify a number, account or website before you send money in the first place.

A few patterns are worth knowing across the region. Many scam gambling and betting sites operate in the Vietnam-Cambodia border area, and most are linked to scam casinos and human trafficking, so a site that looks Cambodian or Vietnamese may actually be run from a compound far from where it claims to be¹⁰. Cambodia does have regulated gaming venues where foreigners and tourists are allowed to gamble, so a licensed venue and a scam site are very different things¹¹. Online gambling companies in Cambodia take payment by local bank transfers, international payment gateways and e-wallets, which is why a payment can vanish across borders within minutes¹².

India: helpline 1930 and the cybercrime.gov.in portal

India has the most developed reporting infrastructure for online gambling fraud in the region, and it exists partly because the underlying market is heavily restricted. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 imposes a complete ban on all forms of online money games, covering games of chance, games of skill, and any mix of the two, along with their advertising, promotion and facilitation¹. The ban applies whether the game is based on skill, chance, or both, and covers offering, aiding, abetting or inducing anyone to take part. If you were playing on an app or site that turned out to be fraudulent, the activity you were drawn into was itself prohibited, which is one reason the reporting system is built for it.

The two channels to know are simple:

• Call 1930. This is a toll-free helpline for quick reporting of online scams and fraud². The cybercrime portal also lists 1930 as the Cyber Crime Helpline¹³.
• File online at cybercrime.gov.in. The portal accepts reports of online financial fraud, and it is the route to use if you want a written record of your complaint².

Both channels are open to anyone in India who has been defrauded, including foreign visitors and residents. You do not need a lawyer to file, and the report can be made in English. Keep your transaction records, chat logs and the app or site name ready before you call or file, because the operator will ask for them.

If your money is stuck on a banned app rather than already transferred out, the advice is to file on the cybercrime portal at cybercrime.gov.in, or call 1930 the same day². Speed matters more than completeness: a report with partial information filed today is worth more than a perfect report filed next week.

Reporting the same day to seek a payment freeze

The reason everyone tells you to report fast is the payment freeze. When a fraud report reaches the authorities quickly enough, they can ask the receiving bank to hold the funds before they are moved on. Once the money has been layered through e-wallets and international payment gateways, the practical chance of catching it drops sharply¹².

So the working rule is: report the same day you realize you have been scammed, not the same day you have gathered all your evidence. In India, that means calling 1930 or filing at cybercrime.gov.in within hours, not days². Elsewhere in the region, go to the police the same day and bring whatever you have: the site name, the account or wallet you paid into, the amounts, and screenshots of the conversations.

There is one other route worth knowing if your dispute is with a licensed casino rather than a scam site. In Singapore, casino patron disputes are handled through the Gambling Regulatory Authority, which publishes guidance for patrons on how a dispute is resolved⁵. That process is for disagreements with a regulated operator, for example over winnings or game conduct, and it is separate from reporting a fraud. If you are not sure which situation you are in, our page on licensed vs unlicensed online casinos explains how the risk differs.

Who you are reporting to: police and cybercrime units in the 12 jurisdictions

When you file a report, it helps to understand who is on the other end, because that shapes what happens next.

In India, your report goes into a national cybercrime reporting system, and the 1930 line is staffed to take fraud calls quickly¹. In Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan and Cambodia, a gambling scam report goes to the police, and within the police there are units that handle cybercrime and financial fraud. Cambodia's National Police track scam complaints centrally: the Commissioner reported that 1,136 complaints were filed in 2025, which means the reporting system is being used at scale¹⁴.

Japan is a special case in one respect: gambling at online casinos by connecting from within Japan is a crime even if the casino is legally operated overseas¹⁵. That does not change the practical advice, which is to report fraud to the police, but it does mean a Japanese resident who was defrauded by an offshore casino site should be aware of their own position. The gambling consultation helpline at 0570-007-221, open Monday to Friday except national holidays and year-end/New Year, is a place to talk through gambling problems, including situations where money has been lost¹⁵.

The gambling help lines in the table below are staffed by counseling services, not investigators.

These lines will not investigate your scam, but they can tell you where to take it, and they are used to hearing from people in exactly your situation.

Regional cooperation: the scam conference convened in Phnom Penh

Reporting a gambling scam in Asia has always been hard because the site, the server, the bank account and the people running it are usually in different countries. That is the problem a major conference in Phnom Penh was convened to address.

Cross-border agreements: Cambodia with the UK and China, South Korean cooperation

Alongside the declaration, individual countries signed bilateral agreements at and around the conference.

Cambodia and the United Kingdom signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen cooperation against online scams, fraud and transnational organized crime. Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister Sar Sokha and UK Minister of State Lord Hanson signed the MoU during the conference⁸. For a British expat or visitor scammed by a site run from the region, an agreement like this is what makes a report to police at home connectable to action where the site actually operates.

Cambodia and China also pledged intensified security cooperation against online scams. Prime Minister Hun Manet met with a Chinese vice minister, and the two sides pledged to step up joint efforts on transnational crime and cyber scams¹⁷.

Enforcement in practice: charges and reported losses

Reports do lead to charges, and the scale of the losses explains why governments are investing in this.

In Singapore, an alleged scam syndicate mastermind was charged with engaging in a conspiracy to help others retain crime benefits, accused of running money laundering scam operations¹⁸. Cases like this begin with victim reports, which is one reason filing yours matters even if you doubt anything will come of it.

What a report can and cannot recover

A report is worth making, but it is worth being clear about what it can achieve.

What a report can do: trigger a payment freeze if you act fast, put the site and the receiving accounts on the authorities' radar, create the paper trail your bank may ask for, and in aggregate, build the cases that lead to charges like the one in Singapore¹⁸. If your dispute is with a licensed casino rather than a scam site, a formal dispute process exists: in Singapore, when casino gambling is declared void, all wagers are refunded to patrons, and the casino operator may recover winnings from affected patrons if the patrons had been clearly informed of the circumstances and means of recovery⁵.

What a report usually cannot do: get your money back quickly, or sometimes at all. Once funds move through e-wallets and international gateways, recovery is rare, and the Cambodian complaint figures, with few resolved, reflect that reality¹⁴. For a fuller picture of when banks do and do not refund scam losses, see our page on scam reimbursement rules.

One last warning that belongs on any page about reporting a scam: be careful who you turn to afterwards. Fund recovery scams target people who have just been defrauded, posing as lawyers, hackers or agencies that promise to retrieve your money for an upfront fee. The channels listed on this page, 1930 and cybercrime.gov.in in India, the police elsewhere, and the gambling help lines in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Japan, are free to contact, and they are the ones that actually connect to enforcement.